


the terrifying nature of love

by Blue_Rive



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil Is A Terrible Person But I Love Him Anyway, Cecil Palmer is In Denial, Cecil-centric, Character Study, Edited, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Unnecessary Footnotes, carlos is in here but he's pretty minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23523469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Rive/pseuds/Blue_Rive
Summary: The thing was, living in Night Vale, you tended to distance yourself from things that would make you scared, or sad, or lead to screaming in the quiet of your own home at three in the morning. You couldn’t afford to truly care about anyone, because odds were that you or they would be dead in the next week. Cecil didn’t- couldn’t- have the kind of emotional range to really get attached to people. He had a kind of apathy that lead to him sending interns out to die time and time again, to carelessly and cheerfully report deaths, to occasionally even kill people if it was mandated by the city and/or everyone was doing it.or: cecil is not okay, constantly denies that he's not okay, and is in general a messor: a lot of the night vale fic I’ve read has cecil being nice and innocent and we can't have that
Relationships: Carlos/Cecil Palmer
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	the terrifying nature of love

**Author's Note:**

> i fell into a night vale hole a month or so ago and haven't emerged since. yes i know i'm about 7 years late to this party. be quiet.
> 
> was originally going to be multichapter, but was edited to be a oneshot instead.

Cecil Gershwin Palmer hated a lot of things. He had a running list of everything he disliked, written on a clay tablet that he kept with his radio notes so he could remember the appropriate times to call people out for their misguided, terrible, or annoying actions. (A section, taken from the middle of the list- ... _ Steve Carlsburg, Telly, giant worms, Desert Bluffs, all rival sporting teams, sports in general, capitalism, mountains, Steve Carlsburg, limes, Susan Wilman, Steve Carlsburg…)  _ Cecil had a slot of airtime at 9:45 a.m. where he read the entire list out loud, interspersed with various insults to whoever the list currently said was the main object of his ire. 

Point was, he got angry easily and held grudges for longer than most people had been alive.* Other people’s anger burned hot- Cecil’s was a kind of cold fury that simmered underneath the surface of everything he said. He rarely forgave anyone.** If you did something especially terrible, ( _ or, _ Cecil thought a bit vindictively,  _ you were asking for it, _ ) you wouldn’t know what was going on right away. You’d only figure it out when all your dishes were replaced by sentient, (very absorbent!) sponges, or the Sheriff’s Secret Police were knocking on your door with evidence of a crime you did not commit, or, most commonly, when you turned on the radio and found yourself being passive-aggressively denounced on Cecil’s news station.

*Immortals obviously excluded, sorry, he always forgot about them.

**Forgetting was a lot more common than forgiving for him, due to the fact that large stretches of his memory, especially his childhood, were missing. He tried not to dwell on it too much, except during the city-mandated hours of existential dread. He was approaching forty-two- why would he remember something that happened (A hundred and thirty-five years ago? No, that couldn’t be right-) Something that happened twenty-seven years ago. Plenty of people in Night Vale didn’t remember their childhood. Carlos didn’t even remember how he got here anymore!

Cecil wasn’t a good person. He knew that, in some small corner of his mind, but was unsure of when he’d realized, or rather, when it had happened. When had he changed from an enthusiastic human teenager to what he was now- creepy, odd, somewhat eldritch? 

The thing was, living in Night Vale, you tended to distance yourself from things that would make you scared, or sad, or lead to screaming in the quiet of your own home at three in the morning. You couldn’t afford to truly care about anyone, because odds were that you or they would be dead in the next week. Cecil didn’t- _couldn’t-_ have the kind of emotional range to really get attached to people. He had a kind of apathy that lead to him sending interns out to die time and time again, to carelessly and cheerfully report deaths, to occasionally even kill people if it was mandated by the city and/or everyone was doing it.* 

*Murder had been a fad a while back, but had seemed to die out a couple months ago, with only the odd cult or middle-aged person who was behind on trends still practicing it.

When Carlos came, though, Cecil was besotted. He couldn’t help it! If you’d seen those beautiful chocolate brown eyes, or that handsome square jaw, or that  _ luxurious  _ long hair… 

When he was in love, Cecil discovered, it could have the same strength as his anger. It wasn’t cold at all, though, no matter how much he tried to make it. He was giddy and passionate, like he was a schoolchild scribbling doodles of himself and his crush’s initals on his notebook. (He actually did do that on his radio notes.) He was even considering changing his 9:45 editorial to simply talking about Carlos. This wasn’t too new. Non-romantic love could also fill his mind like this, making him gush about one thing or another, filling up half of his broadcast by talking about the book he read last week or cloud formations* or a cute cat video. 

*Only on Cloud Amnesty Day, of course!! Cecil would never  _ dream  _ of illegally talking about clouds. That got people taken in for reeducation, and so he aggressively  _ did not _ do that. At least, not unless he wanted time off or to watch shows like  _ His Dark Materials,  _ (a riveting musical about Will and Kirjava’s adventures in the Wild West)  _ Insects Which May Or May Not Give You Nightmares,  _ and  _ Yes, That’s Probably Cancer  _ which he couldn’t access due to not having an HBO subscription normally. 

_ So it’s okay,  _ Cecil reasoned to himself.  _ And besides, I care about  _ some  _ people. What’s one more?  _ He cast around in his mind, though, and couldn’t think of anyone. Maybe his sister Abby, but they’d been growing apart after she married that  _ jerk _ Steve Carlsburg. This was about where he started to panic. What if Carlos got hurt? It was all too likely, and then where would that leave Cecil? 

The good thing was that Cecil was very good at ignoring his worries. So he tried not to think about it too much.

When Carlos entered the city under the bowling alley, a year after they’d first met* Cecil felt a kind of- a kind of stupid, breathless panic, the kind he’d been trying to avoid, had managed to distance himself from before. 

*”First met” meaning: Carlos gave a presentation and Cecil had watched, paying rapt attention and not processing a single word of what was spoken. 

Carlos was fine. Cecil tried to block out the fear that was threatening to take him over. He wasn’t- he was fine. He was okay. He wasn’t worried. He hadn’t gotten lethally attached to Carlos, and it didn’t matter if he had, anyway, because Carlos was going to be okay. He wasn’t upset. He wasn’t worried. He found himself saying those words over and over into the microphone, growing louder and louder. He was  _ fine.  _ Carlos was  _ fine.  _

Carlos wasn’t fine. He was attacked, and he got hurt, might have been  _ killed _ . Cecil still had a death grip on the trophy, knuckles turning white, and he couldn’t stop the fear and grief filling him. In the last year, whenever he’d needed something else to focus on, he’d thought of Carlos’ face. A few months ago, Station Management had almost killed Cecil, and he’d only made it through by imagining being on a date with Carlos instead of where he actually was, running his hands through that perfect hair. Now, when he tried to imagine that, Carlos would turn to say something, and Cecil would see a dark streak of blood running down his face, and he’d try to warn him, and then he’d be thrown back into the equally painful reality. 

Carlos is okay. Cecil sat in his booth, trying to process the information he’d been given.

Love hurt, Cecil thought, with a bit of a laugh at how even though he was an eloquent radio host, someone tasked with using their words on the air, he couldn’t think of anything better than that. Love hurt, and Cecil had always tried to put up barriers against getting hurt, or at least ignore his pain, ignore his love, but he couldn’t do that anymore. Or at least, couldn’t do that anymore with Carlos. 

Maybe, someday, he’d find room to add more people to that list, until the amount of people he loved was greater than the people he hated. But for now, it had one name, written with a flourish at the top, and that was good enough for Cecil.

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment/kudoes if you like!


End file.
